This invention relates to an improved vehicle finishing apparatus and more particularly to an improved finishing device which includes an improved, efficient means for preventing flexible finishing elements on the finishing device from collapsing against the drum to which the finishing elements are attached.
Finishing devices such as car finishing brushes and polishing or buffing devices have in the past been used in automatic car and truck finishing machinery of the type wherein remotely or automatically controlled equipment is used to wash, dry, wax, polish, or buff the surface of the vehicle. Conventionally, these finishing devices include a drum which is biased towards the vehicle by a spring, hydraulic, pneumatic, or gravity operated system. A motor turns the drum which causes the finishing elements on the drum to wash, dry, polish, or otherwise finish the vehicle's surface.
Such finishing devices have in the past been made from a number of materials. One example of a prior art finishing device is a car washing brush which has elongated, flexible plastic filaments alternating with shorter adjacent plastic filaments. This brush, however, has several disadvantages. Chief among those disadvantages is that the shorter filaments do not provide optimal support to the elongated filaments when the brush is rotated and biased against a car. In this situation the elongated filaments are deflected towards the shorter filaments. Because both sets of filaments are relatively narrow in effective width, it is possible for the shorter filaments to become interwoven with the elongated filaments. In extreme cases, the shorter filaments can protrude through the elongated filaments and can come into direct contact with the car being washed. Furthermore, since neither the elongated filaments nor the shorter filaments are secured together except at the surface of the drum, any stiffening forces supplied by the shorter filaments to the elongated filaments are not transmitted efficiently along the length of the drum. This prior art brush is therefore subject to localized collapse of the elongated filaments against the drum.